I recently activated a couple of parks and decided to add a bluetooth keyboard to the sBitx V3 and see how operational it would be like that.
On this day I decide to activate Chickamauga Battlefield but first it seems a “widow maker” dead tree fell into the pull off at US-0716… I cleared what I could without a chainsaw and then setup the radio.
The below view gives you a good measure of just how big this “parking lot” is…lol. This lot would hold two small cars or my truck and a motorcycle and that is about it. The cars going by are the worst part though. These cars sometimes emit terrible amounts of RF hash… first world problems I guess…
I setup the usual antenna system but only for 15 meters as I was feeling a bit adventurous today and figured I would stick it out on 15 meters till I got the activation secured. I could have done the same thing in 15 minutes on 20 meters using CW, but there are plenty of ops on 20 meters already so I figured I would warm up another band instead. Well, the QSB was obvious when watching the FT8 waterfall, you could see the band come in and out as the stations would get real loud then fade almost all the way out. This made FT8 challenging since it takes a couple of minutes to complete the series of messages. None the less, I was able to get 11 contacts anyway, even with the frustration of some more that never did complete… but so is HF, she is a fickle girl at times…
Today saw the common mode choke come back as I had it nearby and the SWR was a little off. So I threw it inline with the radio to keep it happy. These are really simple to make and I show how I do it on a video, that is in live-stream format, on YouTube, at this link if your interested. Link to video about making a common mode choke for QRP work (it can probably handle 100 watts without issue but I have not tried it) and POTA ops.
Below we have the operating position for today, notice I didnt even bother with the CW key today as I had planned from the outset to only work FT8 and then pack up. Took me longer than I had anticipated but I did it! haha. Well, to be fair, I did have a CW key in this photo, you see the sBitx will also send CW from the keyboard. I use this to great effect at the other activation I am going to talk about shortly…
The one thing I really like about using 15 meters from a park with a ham-stick antenna is that I am able to work DX pretty consistently. As we see here I worked 5 DX stations out of the 11 I got into the logbook that day. That is a phenomenal amount of DX stations for me. I just seem to get REALLY good propagation when I get on 15 meters for some reason. I will get one every now and then on 20 meters, but I get them regularly on 15… just something to think about if you are into chasing DX and want to also do POTA…and use a ham-stick antenna. You see every contact you make from the park counts towards your POTA log, so even if they are not participating in the program, like a recent ragchew I had while at a park, still counts to your 10 you need for that day.
The other park I went to recently was Booker T Washington just NE of Chattanooga TN. I have not been back to the park for a while so it was nice to put it in the log again. Instead of struggling around on 15 meters at this location I chose to run 40 meters and 20 meters for a while instead. I hopped on 40 meters FT8 to start with as I have not been on that band from a park using FT8 yet. It did not disappoint. There were a few stations still lingering on the air so I was able to work several of these stations before the band noise got so bad that I could not complete contacts and further. I even worked the W0E special event station which is really cool.
This is a really old park and has changed over the years. These were once campsite areas but have since been simply turned into day use “picnic” areas with most of them essentially becoming simply parking spaces for people that go for walks. There are a few that have picnic tables and even grills but most are now just parking spaces along the loop.
After working 40 meters FT8 for about 1/2 hour or so, I decided to give keyboard CW a try on the sBitx V3. This also did not disappoint. I was surprised how easy it was to transition from using a paddle to using the keyboard to send CW. It did take a little getting used to for me to become proficient with it, but after just a few minutes it was like I had been doing it for years and I even figured out the keyboard short cuts for the memories too, so I could use them easily for the exchange and such. This made it easy to log as well as send so I kinda liked using it this way to be honest. It is more fun to me to use a keying device of some sort, but if I forget my key, I now know I can still get on CW and make POTA contacts with it easily. That is a nice option to have in a 400$ radio to be honest about it. Well, to be fair, if you have used an sBitx for sending CW, then you also know how frustrating the keying is with it. It is possible to use it to about 20 WPM or so without much issue but above that, the keying delay because of the way the code is written, will cause the radio to send mistakes. Once you learn to hold the key just a little longer than usual it works just fine at speed of 20 WPM and less so it isnt a huge deal for me. Much over that though and the radio just wont work as of right now. From what I have heard, there is a beta of the next version of the code that will address this problem, but I am not able to compile the code properly so I am patiently waiting for the official release to drop before upgrading again. JJ just released an update to his fork of the code as well and it has a bunch of new features like a tune button and such, but I am also waiting on that one as well so that the bugs get ironed out before I install it on my machine. Now back to the activation…
After that I hopped on 20 meters FT8 and jumped into the fray for a few minutes to see if I could grab a few more calls for the day right quick and that would be a yes! I got 3 more stations in the log using this mode on 20 meters as well. What a day!
Today also saw nice enough weather to setup on the bed cover and these two photos show how I have to do this if I am on the truck power cable from the cab. It is just long enough to reach out the window and power the radio…lol. Barely… (I really should make a longer power cable or something…haha) This worked out today as the whole location was in the shade so I didn’t have to fight off the sun while trying to activate. A lot of the time, this is the reason I don’t operate from the bed cover in the summer, it is in the sun and just plain hot…
As you can see below, the height is about right for me activating too, I can write as well as operate the radio and it is at just the right height for me and my stature. If you like to work POTA, and you do regularly activate, what is your normal operating position? I have a few with this one being one of my favorites even though I don’t use it much.
Thank you for following along and I hope to work you on the air soon!
73 - WK4DS